Interview#4: Mindfulness Re-defined and the Jhanas Re-defined - Conversations with Delson

This phrase mindfulness has become really popular nowadays, and I think it often gets watered down. There's often, even in the meditation world, the deeper meditation world, there are two types of mindfulness. There seems to be the Vipassana noting, lifting, lifting, eating, eating, chewing, chewing, chewing, kind of focused mindfulness. And then there's this twin mindfulness that you've been referring to, which is something that maybe you could unpack for us.

So that's a good question, because first we have to understand what mindfulness is and where it comes from. It comes from the word, the Pali word, which is Sati. And that comes from the Sanskrit word, which is Smriti, which means to remember. And what are we remembering? We're remembering to observe how mind's attention moves. And that's really the twin mindfulness.

The mindfulness that's understood commonly is this, as you said, this mindfulness of eating, or mindfulness of walking, or mindfulness of breathing as well, or whatever it might be. And what's happening there is the mind becomes super concentrated, let's say, in the mindfulness of eating, instead of actually observing how mind is moving and how mind's attention is working. It's just super focused on the eating. And so you're just mindful of the eating rather than seeing how the mind is working. The twin mindfulness is looking at the mind's attention.

Yes, you are aware that you are eating. Yes, you are aware of the taste of the food. Yes, you're aware of the texture of the food and the biting and all of that. Fine. But what you're, and this is the crucial part of it, is how mind is moving. Is the mind taking it personally? Is the mind craving? Or is the mind seeing it as an impersonal process? And so the twin mindfulness, as you put it, is that remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. In doing so, you're seeing in the movement of that mind, is there any craving?

In the movement of that mind, is there peace? Or is there agitation? Is there craving? Or is there no craving? And by using that kind of mindfulness, you're able to immediately recognize if there's craving and use the six R's process to let that go. So this, we really might equate it with the psychology term of metacognition. Metacognition, yeah. Observing the mind itself, observing how mind's attention moves. That's like mind seeing mind, so to speak, that metacognition.

Another difference I guess I'd emphasize is instead of having a laser beam of attention that's really zoomed in on some part of your experience, like one of the five aggregates, it sounds like there's no sense of being the one that's mindful. You're just observing the mind. Exactly. In some ways. And this is what then naturally goes into the experience of the open aware jhanas. Because if you have the mindfulness that's super focused, then all you're doing is you're suppressing the hindrances. You're suppressing the mind. Whereas if you have this metacognition, as you say, where mind is watching how its attention is moving, then it's aware enough to be able to recognize what different factors are arising in the jhana.

Hence the Anupada Sutta, where Sariputta is able to see the different kinds of factors that are arising, but his mind is still mindful. His mindfulness is sharp and he still has collectedness around his object of meditation. And in the Satipatthana Sutta, I think a lot of the confusion arises from that, because it does break up the different foundations of mindfulness, and you can see how people would think, "I need to pay attention to this particular aspect of my experience."

So what's your interpretation of that sutta, or how does that relate to this understanding of mindfulness? If you go back to the Satipatthana Sutta, when we talk about the body, for example, there are certain actual meditation objects that are given. For example, seeing the thirty two impurities of the body, the asubha meditation, or looking at the body as being dead and going through different processes of decay. And these are meditations prescribed for the lust that might be in the body. But aside from that, there are different kinds of levels. So you have mindfulness of the body, you have mindfulness of feeling, you have mindfulness of chitta, as they say, or as I say, is mind or mind.

So you have mindset, which is observing how different kinds of moods arise. And then you have what is what is known as the mindfulness of the dhamas, which is observing how different kinds of moods and mindsets arise. And then you have what is known as the mindfulness of the dhamas. Dhamas here meaning phenomena, so the five hindrances.

Anytime you recognize there's a five hindrance, you're using mindfulness. The enlightenment factors: anytime you're aware that there is present this enlightenment factor in the mind, you're using the mindfulness of phenomena. So it's not a step-by-step process. So you're looking and looking and looking and feeling. It's whatever arises in that moment. Mind's attention will move sometimes from the body, or sometimes through the awareness of a hindrance present, or sometimes through a feeling, whether it's physical or mental, or just a mindset or a mood.

But the other way to look at it, and this is just a simple interpretation based on the experience of the jhanas, is to say you're getting to subtler and subtler levels of understanding when you're using the jhana process. So you first are more aware of the body when you're in the core jhanas. Then you're aware of the jhanas. Then you're aware of the feeling, which is when you have the experience of joy, and like piti and sukha. And then you're aware of the mindset, where you're able to see the arising and passing away of consciousnesses.

And then finally you're aware of phenomena, namely the arising of suffering and the cessation of suffering. So that's one way to experience it. But I'm just saying generally, there's no need to make an exercise where you have to first look at the body, then you have to look at the feeling, then you have to look at the mind, then you have to look at the phenomena. These are all broken down for you to have better understanding and better clarity.

But they can arise in whatever way they will arise. Sometimes the attention will move to the body, as I said, or sometimes it will move to one of the noble truths, or it will just move to a feeling, or whatever it might be. But whatever it might be, it is to be mindful for the purpose of recognizing if there is craving present or not.

And hearing you talk about that, it strikes me that the other definition of mindfulness starts at a false premise, that you are in control of your attention somehow. Whereas this definition, remembering to observe how attention moves on its own, starts with right view. Yes, exactly. It is already with that view, that the attention is impersonal. So it sounds like you are in control of your attention. So it sounds like you are describing two different types of jhana. Could you explain the concentration jhana versus a twin jhana? Yes. And we might talk about, actually, define what TWIM is too. Yes. So when we talk about, well, we start off with that mindfulness, with the assumption that the attention, as we said, is that the attention itself is personal.

So there is a personalizing in the sense of directing your attention, instead of actually just observing how the attention is moving. So you're actually directing it. And by doing so, you're becoming super focused or laser pointed towards one object, or towards just, for example, you were talking about the mindfulness of eating, or just watching how you're eating, or how it tastes, and things like that. When you do that, you're not really having any insight into what's happening. There is just this experience of mind's attention being directed a certain way, but there's no actual insight that arises from there. So you have no way of understanding how to deal with the pain that's arising when there's just a noting, here is pain.

But what do you do with that? And how are you looking at or observing what the reaction to that pain is? You might notice the reaction to the pain, but if you're not able to use the six R's process, then you're not actually dealing with the craving, or the aversion, or rather the aversion, that's arising because of that pain. You're just noting there is aversion, and that's it.

When we talk about the twin jhanas, we are starting with that understanding that the attention itself is impersonal. So you're just seeing how attention moves, dependent upon mental contact, or physical contact, or whatever it might be. So you're aware that there is an attention to loving kindness, for example, but you're not so super focused that the mind becomes oblivious to any kind of hindrance that might arise. Because when you become super focused, you're not only suppressing the mind, but you're suppressing the hindrances.

And when you do that, you're also suppressing the ability of mind to gain insight, and wisdom, and clarity on how to deal with that hindrance. So when we do twin jhanas, what we're really doing is starting with the understanding that the attention will move however it will move. But because there is an open mind, because there's an open awareness, you're able to detect, okay, now the attention is no longer on an object, and now you use the six R's process to recognize that, and return it back, by dealing with the hindrance in the way of recognizing that there is a craving, or recognizing there's an aversion.

You go a step further by understanding, letting go of that attention to it, and relaxing the formations related to that craving, or to that aversion, and then bringing up the joy, and then returning back to your object. Every time you do this, you are experiencing right effort, which means you are activating or cultivating the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path. So the TWIM jhana is all about the Eightfold Path.

So the TWIM jhana is all about actually all of the integrated processes of the different parts of the Eightfold Path are happening every time you use the 6R's process. Now when we talk about TWIM, what is TWIM? It's tranquil wisdom insight meditation. So tranquility here is referred to that tranquil awareness. The mind is not super focused, it's just aware, it's tranquil, and it's equanimous.

In the sense that when we talk about TWIM. In the sense that, we talk about TWIM, what we talk about TWIM is so sharp, it's able to see the links of dependent origination. And that is the experience of wisdom. That is the wisdom into the nature of reality, into the nature of the building blocks of perception, and how the world is created through that perception.

So tranquil, to revisit that, tranquil is basically a mind that is open, collected, equanimous, and not super concentrated. Wisdom is the wisdom of understanding how the mind's attention moves, and then understanding that there is a craving present, and dealing with it.

And so the insight that arises also happens whenever you get into deeper levels of cessation throughout the process of jhana. Yeah, that's very interesting, and you know, one way that's helped me to understand it is that in this other type of jhana, you're often trying to construct an experience, you're saying, "I want only the good, and I don't want any of the hindrances, and I'm going to focus on that good feeling until it really expands, and I'm just joy." Yeah. Whereas in the TWIM jhanas, you're really relaxing the hindrances, and the mind focuses on its own, so that only the wholesome's left, it's like you're trimming off the branches, or you're having whatever analogy you want to use.

Right. And my understanding is, this is coming directly from the suttas, right? Because there's also this historical aspect where the Visuddhimagga is talking about this second type of jhana, and that led to a lot of confusion, so maybe you could give a little background on what was actually being taught. Yeah. So that's a really good point. Well, I just want to say, when it comes to the traditional understanding of jhana, that is to say, outside of the scope of the vipassanthas, and what has been taught in the different traditions out of the vipassanthas, and so on, has always been about two things.

Getting a mind to a super collected state, and then after you have that kind of a mind, directing it towards vipassana practice. So the idea is that the samatha and the vipassana are divorced. There's not an actual harmony between the two. And there is a sutta where it talks about how samatha and the vipassana, where it talks about how samatha leads to vipassana. So there's four ways to get to the Dhamma. But the first three ways have to deal with samatha and vipassana. And that is to say, that there might be first a collected mind. But if that mind is collected in the process of the sutta jhanas, in the TWIM jhanas, then it will lead to vipassana, which is that insight.

So it is fused anyway. It's not saying that there is only samatha. It's saying that that collectedness is also followed by insight. That tranquility and meditation is also followed by an awareness, an understanding, an understanding, a wisdom, an insight. Or the other way around is that the vipassana leads to samatha. And so that could just be an understanding that can happen in the process of meditation. And this is where I was talking about the other day, which is you get an insight, and that insight allows you to go deeper by letting go further. And then the further you let go, the deeper the insight. And so the step-by-step process occurs. It's like the insight leads to further letting go, and the letting go leads to further insight.

Then there is the third understanding of the fusion of both. And anytime you go into the jhanas, or rather you go into the suttas, and they talk about the jhanas, they talk about, and this is very important to understand, is there's two particular suttas. There is Majjhima Nikaya, and there's two particular suttas, and there's three particular suttas, and there's four particular suttas, and insight.

So in other words, when we're doing the TWIM jhanas, we are having that samatha, we are having that calm, collected, meditative state, but in that process, because the mind is open, we're also having the natural vipassana, which is to say, you don't have to force yourself to look at it. It will come up when it comes up, and you're naturally seeing how this process works and unfolds. And there's also some practice instructions, even though they're very bare bones in the suttas, right? Yes, when you look at Majjhima Nikaya 111, it guides you through all of the suttas, but there's also other recommendations where the Buddha or the other monastics are talking about how there is this samadhi which is natural, this samadhi which isn't forced.

It's just letting the mind observe what is happening, and seeing how mind's attention moves. So that's really what we've been talking about all this time. And with the instructions with regard to the breath, really recognize that you're breathing in and out, and tranquilize the bodily formations. There's no point where it says focus on the nostril hairs or anything like that. Yeah, that's a very good point, because that has come out of, let's say, the Visuddhimagga or other traditions that follow that kind of idea, which is you're super focused just below the nostrils, or whatever it is, or whatever it might be, and then using that super concentrated state, as I said, then they will go into the practice of vipassana.

But here, when they talk about the mindfulness of breathing, we're not controlling the breath, we're not observing anything that is super focused, we're just saying there is an understanding that the breath is long, or there's an understanding that the breath is short, and you're tranquilizing, meaning you're relaxing, using the relaxed step to let go of any identification with that process. And if you get deeper into that sutta, it also talks about how the four foundations of mindfulness are also developed through that process of being mindful of this process. So in other words, even though you are mindful of the breathing process, you're not taking the breath as your object, you're just having an open awareness to see how mind's attention is moving to the body, or to the feeling, or to the mind, or so on.

And it says how through this process, the seven enlightenment factors are cultivated, because it begins with mindfulness, and dependent on mindfulness, you have then the discrimination of states, or the discernment of states, which is dhamma vichaya. From there, there is energy or effort, the right kind of effort. From there, there is a joy that arises, that is the piti. From there, there is tranquility. From that tranquility, there's collectedness, and from that collectedness, there's equanimity. That's why when we look at the fourth jhana, it says, because we're going through that process of the enlightenment factors in the first, second, third, and fourth jhana, but by the time you get to the fourth jhana, it says there is a mindfulness born of equanimity.

The reason being is, at that point, the mind has reached that level of the enlightenment factor of equanimity, and the next step of mindfulness has been conditioned by that equanimity, that has been conditioned by the prior enlightenment factors. It is this cyclical process. With the mindfulness of breathing, it's not about concentrating. It's not about focusing on the breath. It's not about focusing on the nostril. It's about looking and observing how mind's attention is moving. You could do that with any other object in meditation. You could do that with, of course, loving kindness, or you could do it with the asubha practices, or you can do it with seeing the charnel ground practices.

Or you could do it with watching or doing walking meditation as well. In walking meditation, you might just be observing the loving kindness, but you're still observing how mind's attention is moving. And the reason you're doing that is, one, it's sharpening the mindfulness, and two, in that process, you're recognizing if craving is present or not. You're just saying, you're not going to be a little, it's sharpening the mind.